I should be really pissed off at old Bob Knox.

Master mechanic, maestro fiddler, able to leap the truth in a single bound; yes, I have my reasons! Several years ago I handed my bass boat, my precious old Ranger, to Bob in the Fall so he could re-carpet it over the Winter. Bob wouldn’t actually do the work, understand, because his health was not good, but he could supervise. He could tell the guy whose name I can’t recall, what to do and how to do it. So I was only mildly concerned as I watched my boat bouncing up the road on his rickety old trailer. Bob and I go way back. A retired school supplies salesman, he was mechanic in residence at Kosh Lake Marina when we came to Rebel’s Isle in 1986. I didn’t give it two thoughts; I took for granted that every marina would have a resident boat mechanic. Every Friday evening we’d roll up and unload our stuff and there sat Bob and Dee, his wife, perched on folding chairs at the open garage door of his shop, and in the shadowy depths behind them was this tapestry of a mechanic’s life. Motors pulled apart, splayed engines and buckets of solvent filled with greasy engine bits. Shelves tumbling with junk; new part packages spilling Styrofoam onto the floor, and tools I don’t know how to use lay where Bob last used them. Bob was always dressed in oil stained shorts, filthy running shoes, a once-white T-shirt, and a full scruffy beard. Can’t recall how Dee was dressed. We’d say hello, and chat for a while and compliment Dee on her loon paintings displayed on the open garage door, which were really pretty good as primitives go. We never bought any though, not our taste. Bob Knox could fix any motor and he didn’t care what kind he worked on next. Water pumps, small outboards. Big block inboards, to Bob they were all just electric motors or internal combustion engines. He understood them all and he made them behave. Back when my boat was new the Johnson 40 had some quirks to sort out. Bob was always there. Patient old Bob sat with the manual and worked his way through the new and wonderful VRO system, until finally it worked, trouble free. It ran without incident for the next twenty years. That’s not why I'm thinking of being really pissed off at him. Bob is an enviable character. He has talent. A lot of people envy those with talent. He had a lovely way with a fiddle. You haven’t heard “Tennessee waltz” if you haven’t heard Bob Knox playing it; he was the kind of musician who lifted the others around him. I know because I got to play in a casual music fest on someone’s front porch once, and my very ordinary folk guitar technique sounded almost good. He actually tried in his sideways way to get me to jam with his band. I chickened out, of course. I tell you about that just to offer some perspective on what I’m about to tell you, and why I should be so very, very pissed off at him. I’m no mechanic, but it is my understanding of the freeze-thaw cycle that causes me to believe that leaving a boat and motor outside buried in a snowdrift all winter is a terrible idea. And I can’t shake the notion that there could be some cause-effect relationship between that and my boat having developed a small leak after twenty years without one, and the plastic oil pump in the old Johnson developing a crack or two. I don’t think this is my imagination running away with me. Mark Jones, my new-found mechanic doesn’t necessarily agree, but then, Mark strikes me as a fundamentally nice guy who wouldn’t say anything derogatory about anyone, let alone a fellow mechanic. Mark points out that the plastic fuel pump in the VRO system – don’t you love this technical stuff? – was always a weak point in that engine. And the crack in the hull could have been there for years; maybe I just didn’t notice it because the automatic bailing pump took care of it. Maybe. Okay. But I can’t forget the time way back when I still had the old fifties era ski boat that came with the cottage. It carried a rumbly old 33 1/3 hp Evinrud ski-twin that needed an overhaul, and I left it in the boathouse for Bob to collect and work on over the winter. Sound familiar? When Mike, from the marina called after the lake had been frozen for a few weeks to ask why I left my boat in the water, I was moved to phone Bob and require an explanation, and what was he going to do about it! Bob played me like a fiddle. He explained that I was not to worry because ice expands at a consistent rate and the pressure on the inside of the water jackets would match and balance the pressure on the outside. And he was sorry he just couldn’t get around to it in the Fall. So busy. After I hung up the phone my head was buzzing with this spectacular implausible improbability, and I marveled at his ability to spin it in real time with no fore-thought. He should have been a press secretary. Mike very kindly chopped the motor from the ice and carried it back to the shop in his pick up truck where it lay in wait for the Spring reckoning. All winter long I seethed. But guess what? The old boat, two owners removed from me is still in service on the lake and the ski-twin fired up on the first try, and ran for another ten years. Bob and I had no further word on the subject, but I won’t forget his beady blue eyes looking me straight in the face that Spring. Last winter was tough on old Bob. He’d already suffered one angina attack, and then more stuff hit him and he had to go in for a multiple by pass. That was in the Fall. But at least he came out, and when we visited them in their partly finished timber frame home he’d built himself on Stoney lake, he was a ghost in white tube socks. Dee was not exactly robust either, having been close to a goner herself two years ago, and the two of them seemed all dusty to me. Bob’s guitars and keyboards and music stands were scattered about, covered with dust, and it was clear that neither of them was up to cleaning much. Not to worry, the boat’s ragged carpeting would be replaced by an assistant under Bob’s knowledgeable guidance. I didn’t worry for a second. Come April, I began to worry. Bob never was very good at returning phone calls, but time was passing and I wanted to know about my boat. Finally a real voice answered, it was Dee. Small talk ensued. How’s your health? Getting around okay? Ah, good your son’s moved in to help out. Can I talk to Bob, now? Is he there? No, he’s not. Oh, okay, when he comes back can you have him call me? No, I can’t. Why? He’s dead. Dead? My ears fill with a rushing sound, probably blood entering or leaving the brain. Thoughts and memories swarm. Disbelief, then belief, a wave of compassion. But what emerges? In my case something dark, and ugly and character revealing. Something I really never wanted to know about myself. We all want to think of ourselves as fundamentally good people, but how could I when my first thought was What about my boat? Something caught me before I said it out loud, but it was close, and I had trouble facing my face in the mirror for many days. I still cringe sometimes. Poor Dee, lost without Bob. Poor Bob. Seems he was a macho-man sort who didn’t share a fraction of his discomfort, tried to carry on regardless, and one day just dropped to the ground. And poor us because the world has lost another fountain of knowledge and experience, and I don’t think he got around to passing it on before he passed on himself. We’ve one less mechanic who’ll fix anything. We’ve one less guy you can call when your pump breaks down, who’ll hop in his tin boat and run over to have a look. We have one less man who’ll work for impossibly low prices and still do quality work. And, the Tennessee Waltz is never going to sound the same. Yep, I should be really pissed off at old Bob Knox.